Short stories and poetry for the hard loving, hard living, and hard drinking. In the pages of this book, Eddie Black leaves his steaming intestines. This is a collection about lost live, sex, drugs, and trying to find your place in this world without letting it grind you down into canned meat. (A large portion of all proceeds goes to housing victims of sexual abuse)

Richard Trench finds himself with no arms and no legs, reduced to a torso in the trunk of a car. There is a reason. It all makes sense. The point is there somewhere . . . Imperfections elucidates the private lives of supermodels and circus freaks, sheiks and designer dominatrixes and the metamorphosis of the body chic. These are lives where the importance of vehicular mephitis-cide, a charity lobster boil for burn victims, a grilled-cheese sandwich with the face of the Virgin Mary toasted on it and a prophecy about the uncanny deaths of the voice-actors for Tigger and Piglet, can not be overlooked. Set in the world of glittering photo shoots in exotic locations, extreme visions of beauty and raucous fashion shows, Imperfections is a genre-bending novel that sits solidly in the foggy area between fact and fiction.

Time-travelling, dimension-jumping, Librarian-spy Irene and dragon-prince Kai will have to team up with an unlikely band of misfits to pull off an amazing art heist—or risk the wrath of a dangerous villain with a secret island lair. A Librarian’s work is never done, and Irene is summoned to the Library. The world where she grew up is in danger of veering deep into chaos, and she needs to obtain a particular book to stop this from happening. Her only choice is to contact a mysterious Fae information-broker and trader of rare objects: Mr. Nemo. Irene and Kai make their way to Mr. Nemo’s remote Caribbean island and are invited to dinner, which includes unlikely company. Mr. Nemo has an offer for everyone there: he wants them to steal a specific painting from a specific world. But to get their reward, they will have to form a team, including a dragon techie, a Fae thief, a gambler, a driver, and the muscle. Their goal? The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, in an early twenty-first-century world, where their toughest challenge might be each other.

Irish magic comes alive in this collection—“a sheer delight of grand storytelling” —featuring Ray Bradbury, Tanith Lee, Charles de Lint and others (Publishers Weekly). From the great Celtic myths featuring the bard Taliesin, the terrible Morrigan, the heroic Cuchulain, to strange and mysterious tales of today, the storytelling traditions of Ireland hold a strong attraction for many. Emerald Magic brings together some of today’s finest fantasy authors to explore these immortal myths, bringing their own vision to these ancient tales of luck, love, and honor. Edited and with an introduction by bestselling author Father Andrew M. Greeley, Emerald Magic contains fourteen wonderful stories of legend and lore, including: In Ray Bradbury’s “A Woman Is a Fast Moving Picnic”, a group of pub regulars set out to discover the truth behind a local song and answer that age-old question: Just how fast does a person sink in a bog? “The Isle of Women” by Jacqueline Carey tell the tale of a warrior sailing for vengeance who happens upon an island ruled by a woman like no other. And when a woman finds her grandfather’s diary, she unleashes the specter of an old debt in Tanith Lee’s “Speir-Bhan”. These and other fantastic tales capture the stirring drama and unique flavor of Emerald Magic.

This book is not a before-and-after story. Our culture treats suffering like a problem to fix, a blight to hide, or the sad start of a transformation story. We silently, secretly wither under the pressure of living as though suffering is a predicament we can avoid or annihilate by working hard enough or having enough faith. When your prayers for healing haven't been answered, the fog of depression isn't lifting, your marriage is ending in divorce, or grief won't go away, it's easy to feel you've failed God and, worse, he's failed you. If God loves us, why does he allow us to hurt? Over a decade ago chronic illness plunged therapist and writer K.J. Ramsey straight into this paradox. Before her illness, faith made sense. But when pain came and never left, K.J. had to find a way across the widening canyon that seemed to separate God's goodness from her excruciating circumstances. She wanted to conquer suffering. Instead, she encountered the God who chose it. She wanted to make pain past-tense. Instead, God invited her into a bigger story. This Too Shall Last offers an antidote to our cultural idolatry of effort and ease. Through personal story and insights from neuroscience and theology, Ramsey invites us to let our tears become lenses of the wonder that before God ever rescues us, he stands in solidarity with us. We are all mid-story in circumstances we did not choose, wondering when our hard things will end and where grace will come if they don’t. We don't need to make suffering a before-and-after story. Together we can encounter the grace that enters the middle of our stories, where living with suffering that lingers means receiving God's presence that lasts.